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Durrant Ade farmed Gallybird Farm, Barcombe from 1837 until the mid-19th century. Like many other Barcombe landowners, he had made his money in Lewes, in a different line of business. Born in Lewes on 27th August 1791 to John & Mary Ade, he was baptised at All Saints church, a his parents using as his given name his mother's maiden name of Durrant. He and his elder brother John (1788-1842) were the third generation of coachbuilders and harness makers in the family. Their grandfather, another John Ade (1735-1822) built the first post-chaise (a fast, covered carriage pulled by two or four horses) for hire in Brighton. John Ade & Sons had premises at 34-37 High Street, Lewes and in Brighton, off Preston and Castle Streets. In 1808 the elder John sold no. 37 to John Baxter who wished to expand his print works. After his retirement in 1816, his sons Durrant and John entered into a new partnership to continue the business. Their father John was buried in All Saints churchyard in 1823. Durrant and his first wife Hephzibah Maria lived in Sun Street, Lewes, and had three children baptised at the Jireh Chapel from 1818 to 1823. Hephzibah must have died shortly after the birth of her third child, as on 23rd February 1824 Durrant journeyed to Westminster to marry Sarah the daughter of the Seaford wheelwright William Towner at Saint Anne's, Soho. The couple, both in their early thirties, set up home in Lewes, and soon added four further children to the family. The business was also expanding, and by 1825 employed sixty workmen at their rebuilt Brighton 'Bazaar', the largest carriage manufactory in Sussex, which produced their latest carriage, the 'Magnet'. The Sussex roads, traditionally impassable all winter, were from the early 1820s, being improved by turnpike trusts with revenue raised from traffic passing through the turnpike gates. In 1817 John McAdam had advised the trusts to the east of Lewes on the "macadamization" of local roads. These improved roads could accommodate faster and more comfortable coaches, so the brothers responded with a double-bodied 'Improved Low Safety Coach' for the London to Brighton route. Durrant withdrew from the partnership with his brother on the last day of 1829 'by mutual consent'. Stephenson's 'Rocket' had been built that year, so was he perhaps concerned about the threat to coach travel posed by the development of the railways? His brother found a new partner in Robert Insoll of Brighton to whom, in 1835, he sold his share of the business and the Brighton premises for £3,500. The opening of the London to Brighton railway in 1841 must have caused a further threat to the former family business, which collapsed in 1842 with the bankruptcy of Robert Insoll. John Ade the younger died in Brighton in the same year. Like his father before him, Durrant took public office in Lewes, being elected 'headborough' (deputy constable) with Nathan Hammond in October 1825. In this office he presided over a public meeting against slavery the following February. His name also appears in the Lewes Town Book as a 'juryman' for the following two years. Eight months after dissolving the partnership with his brother, Durrant had bought Gallybird Farm, Barcombe for £690.12s. The house had been greatly extended by George Stanford, a Lewes carpenter and builder, the father of the vendor. It now had a fashionable Georgian front extension with the weather-boarded façade that we see today. He leased the property for seven years to Lewes postmaster, Samuel Hemsley, while continuing to live in East Street, Lewes. When Hemsley's lease on Gallybird Farm expired in 1837 Durrant, styling himself a 'gentleman' in the Lewes elections of that year, moved in with his wife and four youngest children. He immersed himself in his new rural life and by 1851 was able to describe himself as a 'farmer of thirty acres, employing one labourer' assisted by a fifteen-year-old house servant, local girl Mary Constable. A few years later the couple retired to Brighton with their two spinster daughters Sarah, aged 23, and Anne, aged 20, taking a house at 25 Rose Hill Terrace. His daughter Hephzibah moved to Seaford to look after her step-mother's ageing father William TOWNER. Durrant died at his home in Brighton on 23rd July 1868, aged seventy-seven, leaving the proceeds of the sale of his Lewes and Barcombe properties to his wife Sarah, children Benjamin, Sarah, Anne and married daughter Hephzibah Corney. His son James became an Independent Minister in Brighton, where he took in his widowed mother and his sister Sarah at St. Nicholas House. |
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A View from Baxter's Library with balloon 1828. |
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